For me it was a wake up call for how stupid I was being entrusting my welfare to a badly designed bureaucracy. All I'd be doing by fighting for the right to stay would be setting myself up for another messy situation that impacted my livelihood down the road.
Until I dealt with the German government and professionals that deal with the German government (taxes, visa etc), I had no idea how lucky I have it as an Australian.
I know other people from other countries in Germany. They use a similiar language as you do. Are the rules really that bad, or is it that they are unintuitive?
I would estimate as a freelancer that the paperwork and accounting involved was five times more difficult than in New Zealand where I was also a foreigner, growing from an annoyance to a substantial (and expensive) burden. That alone is enough that I would caution foreigners against moving to Germany to start a business or be self employed.
A lot of the stories I formed my opinion on were second hand, issues my friends were dealing with; such as the Kafkaesque situation of registering for residency in a city, but not being able to rent without residency paperwork, and not being able to get the paperwork without a fixed address.
In Australia, it's just not a thing at all. If the Government tried to make us register with the city we're living in, we'd tell them to fuck off. Albeit in less polite language than that.
In the eight years I lived in New Zealand (as an Australian) I interacted with the government once a year to file my taxes, filled out two census forms and had a ten minute appointment to convert my Australian drivers license to one from New Zealand. It's not just that the interactions were easier, there just weren't any.
> A lot of the stories I formed my opinion on were second hand, issues my friends were dealing with; such as the Kafkaesque situation of registering for residency in a city, but not being able to rent without residency paperwork, and not being able to get the paperwork without a fixed address.
This is the type of problems that come up. I don't understand, though. There are multiple ways to get an address in Germany without a residency permit. You can also rent places without a residency permit. Maybe the person that encountered the issue you describe wanted to rent one specific place which requires a residence permit, and didn't want to do any other (temporary) thing to get an address.
Right, with patience, persistence and a little bit of Googling you can always work through the issues.
But the issues don't exist in the first place in AU/NZ (and presumably UK/US though I can't speak first hand do that). Even if they did, they'd be solved in a much more straightforward manner. I guarantee a similar form here, even though it would never exist, would accept "address pending" as a valid answer.
I'm not trying to say the German way is wrong, but you have to understand how crazy it seems to a foreigner.
Until I dealt with the German government and professionals that deal with the German government (taxes, visa etc), I had no idea how lucky I have it as an Australian.